Watcher in the Woods Read Free Page B

shell. David watched it flash into one of the cars the resistance fighters were hiding behind. It exploded. He saw bodies fly but quickly told himself that they were just parts of the car. The explosion rattled the façade of the building nearest it: a section of it, from ground to roof and ten feet wide, crumbled and fell, exposing the joists of the second floor and attic rafters. He caught a glimpse of an upper-floor bedroom similar to the one he was in, before smoke and dust obscured it.
    Keeping low, he pushed away from the wall, then ran out of the bedroom and down a narrow flight of wooden stairs. They emptied into what used to be a pub. Most of the front wall was gone, pounded to dust. So were half the bar, tables, and chairs. A corner of the upstairs bed, the one that was burning, poked through the ceiling. Swatches of fiery bedding fell through. The heavier pieces plunged down like meteorites; lighter ones floated gently down like leaves from a flaming tree. Already the wood floor had ignited in a dozen spots. Smoke churned against the ceiling, filled the space with gray fog.
    David coughed and coughed again. His throat was raw from the heat and smoke. His eyes stung. His lungs demanded fresh air. He dropped to his hands and knees and scampered across the floor, giving the flames a wide berth. He jumped over the rubble at the front of the building. Twisted rebar caught his foot, and he crashed down. He fell on top of jagged chunks of concrete and flipped over, landing in the street. By the time he caught his breath and blinked away the smoke and tears, three rifles were trained on him.
    He threw up his hands. “Don’t shoot me, please.”
    The faces behind the rifles twisted in confusion.
    â€œ Qui êtes-vous? Identifiez-vous! ” one of the men shouted.
    Oh, crap. David shook his head.
    One man turned to the others, “C’est seulement un enfant.”
    Enfant! David recognized the word from French class. It meant child .
    â€œYes, yes!” he said, nodding his head vigorously. “ Oui . . . enfant, enfant. ”
    The tank belched out another round. The three men hunched down. David bowed his head, covering it with his arms. The explosion was a good fifty yards away. Still, debris zinged past David like buckshot. Something hit him in the calf. He grabbed it in pain, sure that he would find his flesh ripped open. It felt intact, so he opened one eye and looked. His jeans were not torn. No blood.
    The fighters had forgotten him. Two of them were firing their rifles from around the back of a wrecked truck. The other had stepped onto the twisted bumper to get the barrel of a machine gun high enough to shoot over their own barricade.
    David scrambled up. He limped down the block and across the street toward the door he had seen the woman open. Gunfire popped behind him. Divots of plaster ripped from the building on his right. Bullets sparked off the cobblestone on his left. He slammed into the red painted door. The thumb lever of the handle would not depress. He pounded on the door. Thinking of nothing else to say, he cried, “ Enfant, enfant! ”
    The door opened an inch. An eye inspected him. Then it swung wide, and he was pulled inside. The air was stuffy and hot. There was an awful odor, which David knew must be sweat, but the first thing that came to his mind was fear . The room was crowded with women, children, and old men. Several people asked him questions he didn’t understand. He shook his head and nodded, all the while moving to take in every face.
    Then he saw the back of her head, the familiar color of her hair—golden yellow, like turning leaves. But this woman wore a dress. His mother had been taken in her nightgown. Of course, she would have found other clothes by now. He stepped around an old man whose shaking hands wanted to touch him, around two children not much younger than himself. Their cheeks were wet with tears. One of them was glassy-eyed, his